Posted
by
CmdrTaco
on Wednesday February 23, 2011 @01:51PM
from the busy-week-for-apple dept.

Stoobalou updates us on the various Apple rumors, saying, "Snaps of Apple's imminent update to the MacBook Pro range have been leaked, confirming most of the rumors doing the rounds." Light Peak looks like it will be called Thunderbolt. The 13" will feature 2.3ghz Dual Core i5s and 4 gigs of RAM. In addition to the MacBook Pro rumors, the iPad update rumors have been confirmed, with
invitations going out to the formal announcement on March 2.

Oooooh. I just heard that Steve Jobs had a bowel movement! zOMG!!!!!1111eleventyone

I'm so sick of the Apple news posted around here! So I'm gonna keep bitching about it over and over again on every Apple thread so this ad supported site knows just how annoyed I am! When Apple stories often reach 200+ comments, they'll surely back down one day!

The reason leaks don't occur in Oracle or Computer Associates is, no one gives a damn. And leaks do occur at Microsoft and Adobe too, but again, no one gives a damn.

I agree with most of what you wrote about Apple, i.e., the idea of Steve "One More Thing, Leak And I'll Sue You" Jobs leaking is preposterous. I mean Jesus, he was just excoriated here for not giving more info on his health, and shareholders voted today on making their succession plans public (dumb idea, but it does tend to make my point). And there is so much speculation by the Apple blogosphere, somebody has to be right. And vendors and partners violate NDA's early.

What's interesting is that it seems Apple's product announcements are the only remaining tech that gets everyone talking, whether pro or against, people do talk about it. Dell might have released half a dozen new systems last week, but who'd know? I was in a tmobile store the other day and saw a number of Android-based handsets that I hadn't heard of. And even though I consider myself a geek, I have very little idea what the Xoom is, other than a Motorola tablet, and more to the point, why should I care?

I'm not saying that we should care about Apple product announcements, but Apple seems to be the only ones who can generate any significant buzz about whatever it is they're announcing.

Apple's marketing strategy is brilliant. Unlike other companies, they don't release products with incomprehensible names like the KDH-4001. They don't have to address a myriad of OS compatibility issues (for example, A4-based devices are eligible for iOS updates, the older ones aren't). They have streamlined product lines -- one iPad, one iPod Touch, one Apple TV. By reducing choice, they reduce buyer confusion and uncertainty. A side-effect of this zen marketing approach is that it's easy for the press to write about their products. When a new iPad is introduced, we know ahead of time what to expect, with the addition of a few easy-to-explain doodads (camera! Another camera! Faster! Thinner!). That makes for good copy and makes technophobic users feel somewhat comfortable.

Isn't it odd how Japanese cars have just a few trim levels and no stand-alone options besides what you can get installed at the dealership? That/is/ very much like how Apple does things.

The "american car maker" way to sell electronics would be to sell the box for $100 and then mark up all the accessories, so the video cable and the gold plated cat seven ethernet cable each cost $75. Also they'd refuse to discuss prices and only talk how-much-a-month. And instead of spraying rustproofing they'd offer anti-virus installation. Actually that sounds very much like my last trip to Best Buy. Anyone know a good "Japanese style" place to buy electronics in the USA, other than apple?

If you want a decent computer that you don't have to assemble yourself, you pretty much only have Apple left these days - they're about the same price as counterpart Dell's a little more expensive than the others but less bulky (Toshiba's power supplies are about as large as the laptop for example) and you won't gore yourself when attempting to replace user-serviceable parts (HP, Gateway). I only buy Apple at work even if it's for a Windows computer because of the cheap 3 year on-site service (compared to Dell or HP) and the generally good quality of products. I made the mistake once buying HP for cheap and I had to buy my own video cards because they didn't come with one (why'd you sell a desktop without even an on-board video card is beyond me).

Although, having done Apple repairs for a while, I can tell you that parts considered non-user serviceable (which used to include the hard drive in iMacs, don't know if it still does) are often hidden behind a matrix of bear traps and razor blades.

How is being a specwhore objectively smarter than liking clean design and a good experience?

1. As long as a tool does the job that's required of it, why does it matter what colour it is?

2. A confident individual makes choices for their own benefit rather than to seek the approval or admiration of others.

3. As a techwhore, I know enough about Apple's products to realise they're not worth the money being asked for them, unless it was important to me that an electronic gadget needed to match the outfit I was wearing on that particular day. But I also know nothing about, say, cars, so if I was buying a car then I'd read up on them and go to a car expert friend for advice - therefore, someone buying an Apple gadget clearly has too much money and/or no friends to get advice from.

1. Because each one of us a human, and colour and various other aesthetic properties matters to nearly all humans. It might be fashionable in some parts of geek culture to outwardly reject such things but I suspect those who do are doing so against their nature.

2. A confident indivual doesn't care what choices in computing devices others make. Not even enough to compose a post deriding those choices.

3. "Worth the money" is entirely subjective. I won't argue that I have too much money, but most all of my friends prefer some Apple product over its competitors. Either the phone or the music player or one of the laptops. We all do this not for the reasons you believe, but with our eyes wide open to know exactly what it is we are buying, from the processor to memory to storage to colour. It isn't that we want or need to spend money to impress anyone. Quite the contrary: if there were something better we would simply buy it.

But regardless, your concern over how we spend our money falls on deaf ears. We didn't ask you before we made it and we certainly won't start now.

We're not talking about color, we're talking about carrying half a kilo less than a similarly specced laptop, having a well thought out system of interchangeable plugs for the power adapter so you can easily bring it to another country, having a high quality LCD panel, having a backlit keyboard, having a solid aluminium enclosure that doesn't twist when you open the lid, having a computer that wakes from sleep in less than the time it takes to open the lid, having a power connector that automatically releases if you trip over the lead, having a nice wide trackpad that you can use gestures like two-finger tap for right click and two-finger drag to scroll. It's called industrial design. It's something people who have money are willing to pay for.

I think my macbook's backlit keyboard is pretty cool. Sometimes, like right now I'm in a dimly lit room and I don't feel like turning on a light. I've had many friends say that they wish their laptop's keyboard was backlight.

Yes, but you've simply confirmed what I've been saying all along - your friends think its cool meaning that it's a feature designed to improve the look of the device rather than the functionality.

No, he has confirmed that the feature is cool because it provides functionality, not because it's pretty. ABS in a car is pretty cool too, and it used to be something you had to pay extra for -- was it a status symbol, or a safety feature? Might it have been both?

I could argue that I've never been in a situation such that I couldn't use a computer keyboard because it was too dark - therefore, as a feature it adds little in the way of actual functionality.

I could argue that I have never needed the oxygen mask in an airplane. That doesn't mean that I don't think it's functional. A lighted keyboard would be cool -- not in a "Type R" kinda way, but in a "this is useful" kinda way.

Just because you have never had occasion to use a feature, doesn't make it a cosmetic feature.

3. As a techwhore, I know enough about Apple's products to realise they're not worth the money being asked for them, unless it was important to me that an electronic gadget needed to match the outfit I was wearing on that particular day.

You're obviously trolling, but seriously, where does this idiotic meme come from? Macbooks are white or unpainted. Meanwhile, over at Sony [sonystyle.com], the Vaio Fall Collection (this is no joke) are available in black, gold, glossy carbon, bordeaux red, sangria red, striped, wavy black, wavy white, arabesque black, arabesque gold, crocodile black, and crocodile pink. FUCKING. CROCODILE. PINK. So you're clearly an asshat who doesn't know the first thing about accessorizing your computer to your wardrobe, since you should obviously be running Win7 if you have to match your PC to your boots. And by the way, you'll pay as much or more for a Vaio as you will for a Macbook.

You can get the same user experience and clean design out of an HP with an aluminum chassis with Ubuntu installed.

Bwahahahah! Okay, now I know you're a troll. The user experience of OS X vs. Ubuntu is like comparing a professional massage to a kick in the nuts. The aluminum case on the MacBook is just icing on an already delicious cake.

And yes, I've used a variety of linuxes (and Windows) boxes for my main workday computers. As someone who's actually worked hard with all three, my MacBook wins hands dow

Also, people are under the impression that increased cost means better performance. You can get a better equipped laptop for 500-1000 cheaper than Apple provides.

No, people are under the impression that increased cost means a better laptop, this doesn't necessarily mean better performance, and for the most part, they are right. It means a better sturdier case. It good performance but still 5 times the battery life of your $500 craptop. It means a trackpad that actually works. It means a keyboard you can type on comfortably for hours at a time. It means much quieter cooling than your $500 craptop. It means being thinner and more portable. It means looking good

That makes total sense, if you're still living in 1995 and bitter about not being able to build your own clone.

In today's world, the iPad is somehow the cheapest game in town, the iPhone is competitively priced, and the computers are flying off the shelves because by now, everybody knows somebody who won't stop going on about how much easier his life got since he bought one. (I realize that the latter statement is one completely alien to the crowd here, as no/. would deign to waste his time on mere mortals

I can get a nominally better-equipped laptop for cheaper, but it doesn't actually perform better. I've never found a Windows-based laptop yet that doesn't take at LEAST 30 seconds to wake up from sleep or hibernation, and it's usually a minute or more (especially after a system gets gunked up with all the usual crappy drivers at auto start programs). My MacBook Pro wakes up in the time it takes me to type my password. As soon as the screen appears (which is immediately after typing my password), it's ready to use. This fact alone has saved me hours of annoyance in the past year I've had it.

Also on Windows machines, I've had plenty of problems with little glitches here and there, unexplained slowdowns, screen freezes, you name it. With the Mac, those problems have been drastically reduced. Yeah, the Windows machine specs out nicer, but that doesn't mean much outside of test-bed environments, looking at performance from a clean install on a pristine new computer.

Another reason people are so obsessed with them is that they have made themselves become status symbols by their cost and appearance. If you fork out 2000 for a laptop people look at you like you have money. Also, people are under the impression that increased cost means better performance.

Has it occurred to you that people don't necessarily buy it because it's a status symbol, or because they feel they're getting better 'performance'?

No, really. I know guys with Master's degrees in computer science, who a

Those coders use a Mac because its as easy or easier than Windows but its Linux friendly.

See, now you're actually speaking out of your ass. The guys that I know with Macs, are not going home and dropping to the UNIX command line. They're using the GUI. They're not going home in the evening and coding in PHP, they're looking up recipes and sending email.

I am saying that buying a Macbook is a not a purchase you can justify by simply saying "the user experience" is superior unless you are willing to say an

What's interesting is that it seems Apple's product announcements are the only remaining tech that gets everyone talking, whether pro or against, people do talk about it. Dell might have released half a dozen new systems last week, but who'd know? I was in a tmobile store the other day and saw a number of Android-based handsets that I hadn't heard of. And even though I consider myself a geek, I have very little idea what the Xoom is, other than a Motorola tablet, and more to the point, why should I care?

I'm not saying that we should care about Apple product announcements, but Apple seems to be the only ones who can generate any significant buzz about whatever it is they're announcing.

Slashdot, as well as many other ad-supported tech news sites, make money from fanboyism. The people who truely dislike Apple news and products aren't doing themselves any favors by bitchbitchbitching.

I'm not saying that we should care about Apple product announcements, but Apple seems to be the only ones who can generate any significant buzz about whatever it is they're announcing.

The hype can get out of hand, but I think Apple more or less earns this exposure. The reason is Apple is one of the only companies that really puts effort into design.

Now, I say this despite not being much of a consumer of Apple products. My desktops (work and home) run Linux, though my laptop is a (4-year-old) Macbook Pro. But even though I have many reasons I don't like Apple products (lockin, etc.), I recognize the serious effort and skill they put into designing not just a product, but a successful user experience.

One of the reasons journalists and bloggers and design professionals and design enthusiasts all watch Apple closely is that they are one of the only companies that actually carries a design through to its full conclusion. Other manufacturers can, and do, come up with innovative ideas and the beginnings of a good design, but they all ultimately compromise on that design (usually for money). Think of something as simple as putting all those "Optimized for Windows" and "Intel inside" stickers on a laptop: I suspect those were not there in the original artist renderings; they are a corruption of the design. The crapware that is loaded is another corruption. Trying to get the price down to competitive levels requires all kinds of compromises in terms of build details, quality, etc. Edges don't meet quite flush because of some engineering or price constraint (not because it makes the device more pleasing to the user). UI elements are not very responsive because it would have taken too long to optimize that code. They don't worry about there being a subtle (but satisfying) 'click' when plugging-in a cable. And so on. (Note that I'm using "design" as shorthand for "design of the user experience"... obviously these companies have successfully engineered/designed products for a certain constraint-set.)

Apple makes its fair share of gaffes, and it's not obvious that all of their design choices are worth the premium costs. (Again, I mostly don't buy their stuff.) But as far as test cases to ponder, their products are the best around. One can really evaluate the pros and cons of a touch interface now that Apple put serious effort into designing a UI that is touch-centric (previously most touch interfaces were either crappy overlays on top of mousing UI (e.g. Windows tablets) or just terrible to begin win (e.g. a kiosk touch-UI)...).

So, in short, by having a focused vision and seeing it through to the end, they create products that are not ugly mixtures of compromises (where when things don't work you're left wondering if it's because it was a bad idea or poorly executed); their products are consistent and cohesive (so that you can evaluate a given design choice, and copy/improve/ignore it as needed in designing other products). Even if you don't like (and don't buy) their stuff, it's worth watching what they produce.

Apple makes its fair share of gaffes, and it's not obvious that all of their design choices are worth the premium costs.

While I agree with much of what you say I have to ask: What "premium costs"?

Why are we still hearing this even though it's been shown for YEARS now to be a fallacy - ie. other manufacturers aren't significantly less expensive when comparing similarly spec'd hardware, and often have horrid designs to boot?

On the ultra-low end...well, Apple doesn't have an "Ultra-low end" - so you can get a $400 PC vs a $1000 MacBook, and you scream "Look! CHEAPER!" - but the included parts in the PC are all, well, cheaper too. The plastic is cheaper, the screen is cheaper, just about everything is cheaper. THe PC will be loaded with bloatware and a ton of Intel Inside and other such design sticker bullshit. The body will be plastic, not Aluminum. The list goes on and on.

On the ultra-high end...without going to an OEM type build, I ran a fully equipped MBP vs everyone else's web stores when last year's MBP refresh hit. Apple came out $250 more than a similarly equipped Dell, and actually $23 LESS than a similarly equipped HP. (Granted, these are webstore prices and not Amazon/Newegg/etc which I know are better...but doing a direct-from-manufacturer compare here). Add in the fact that there is percisely NO bloatware on an Apple, no stickers, no other cost-cutting-for-PC-maker bullshit, and well...the Apple isn't that bloated price-wise. Throw in an Apple student discount (which is SO ungodly easy to get it may as well be available to everyone) and well...the build quality of the Apple makes up for the 10% or less increased cost.

Sure...you will ALWAYS be able to buy a cheapass PC, and said Cheapass PC will always be cheaper than the lowest of Apple's offerings. But for some of us quality is as important as the specifications, and no $400 Craptop will ever compare to the quality behind an Apple build. Period.

You are describing a mythical Apple that doesn't exist. I had never noticed "there being a subtle (but satisfying) 'click' when plugging-in a cable". So, I inspected the Mac Mini sitting on my desk. Nope. No click when I plug in the cables. Not even a little bit. The edges where the parts meet up also have gaps. They didn't even bother to put the power button on the front of the machine. All in all, it is a moderately attractive box. Nothing special, but moderately attractive, and a usability disas

When Apple talks, it actually means something, unlike the empty promises made my other technology companies.

It's because Apple doesn't announce products months or years before they are released. They only announce them when they are sure they'll have a product to ship. All you hear from other companies is hyped up initial announcements followed by delays and retracted features. From Apple you hear about new products that will actually ship as promised. It's not because Apple is better at shipping quality products on schedule (though they are). It's because they don't go on blabbing about every new technology they have in the works years before a working prototype has even seen the light of day.

One of the reasons is probably their comparatively sparse product lineup. I was looking at Sony Vaio laptops, recently, and they have a 10", 11", 12"... everything up to 17" laptops. Apple has 3, 13", 15", and 17". There are a hundred android handsets with every imaginable combination of hardware, but there only 2 iphones, the gsm and cdma ones. When apple changes their product lineup people know what product they're talking about even if they don't own one. It's not "the 12" version o

Not really. Remember the launch of Windows 7? tech event of the decade as far as I'm concerned, and those of the X360 or even the Kinect weren't so insignificant either.

The reason Apple launches are news is the same reason Microsoft or Google product launches are news: they're an insanely big corporation with more devoted followers than most companies have plain old customers.

Now, you could argue that other large corporations like IBM don't get that kind of media frenzy, but I'd say it's mostly due to their

Now the iPad update will probably have some feature that should have been released with the first generation but for whatever reason *cough* BUT TO MAKE PEOPLE BUY IT AGAIN *cough* was not included.

There is only so much time in the day to bring a product to market. I get what you are saying, but I fully understand why lots of companies, Apple included, leave out features that seem like they should be there from day one. If they had delayed the iPad 1 until every last obvious feature was complete, we would j

Now the iPad update will probably have some feature that should have been released with the first generation but for whatever reason *cough* BUT TO MAKE PEOPLE BUY IT AGAIN *cough* was not included.

Ever read the "Mythical Man Month"? Nine women can't have a baby in a month, and you can't put every possible feature into a new product.

If every product waited to release until they could include all technologies it would ever have, well, we'd never actually see products due to all of the new stuff that gets built.

Like them or not, Apple releases a product that people are free to buy or not. And then, quite predictably, the ones that sell get near-annual refreshes to add features to them -- smaller, better, faster, more storage, touch screen. I've lost count of how many generations of each of the kinds of iPods there are.

And, really, Microsoft has been bragging about coming out with an iPad killer since about two weeks before the product launched. To the best of my knowledge, that doesn't exist yet.

The pro weighs lessThe pro is smaller but has the same screen size and keyboardThe black border around the screen makes it look much better, and at night doesn't distract you from the actual screen.The pro has an SD slot and firewire (though I don't care about the firewire)The pro has a backlit keyboard (very important)The pro can take a better chip, and more memory (important, since I need the 8GB of ram for my 2 virtual machines)The pro has better sounding speakers (they may well be the same, it may just

There are always tradeoffs in the mobile world. Quad core processors use more power, period.

One of these days hardware Nazis will get it that MOST users would rather have more battery life than a quad core processor. MOST users will take more battery life over powerful graphics. Why is this such a difficult concept to grasp?

One of these days hardware Nazis will get it that MOST users would rather have more battery life than a quad core processor. MOST users will take more battery life over powerful graphics. Why is this such a difficult concept to grasp?

Way to make a non-point. The dual-core will need to be upgraded sooner than the quad core. so "Again" said user would delay upgrading longer. As are your apparent plans. Or right, I forgot we're using your arbitrary definitions of adequate performance.

Not to mention the fact that the 'mobile' quad core chips from Intel use 45W, while the dual core ones use 18-35W. You may be able to fit one into the 17" MBP without having power and heat problems, but there's no chance of getting one in the 13" model. Are there any 13" laptops with a quad-core processor? If so, I expect that they're quite a bit thicker, or have a very short battery life.

Of course I read earlier today that there were rumors that it was being pushed back a month or two. Everyone likes rumors because they seem illicit. You weren't supposed to know that! Much sexier than an official announcement of some kind.

It's got Light Peak on it (or Thunderbolt) so that's mostly irrelevant. eSATA, USB3, Firewire 1600 or whatever can all be hooked up through Thunderbolt which is really what makes this release interesting.

It's got Light Peak on it (or Thunderbolt) so that's mostly irrelevant. eSATA, USB3, Firewire 1600 or whatever can all be hooked up through Thunderbolt which is really what makes this release interesting.

Where is this info about Light Peak being able to do eSATA or USB 3 or Firewire coming from?

If that seriously is the final name for Light Peak, then I don't quite agree with their decision. What exactly does it have to do with thunder or bolts? "Thunderbolt port" sounds more like innuendo than an actual port you'd use, as opposed to "Light Peak port". At least "Light Peak" gave me a vague idea of how the tech works by the name alone, whereas Thunderbolt just sounds completely unrelated to the technology.

I swear, marketing comes up with the worst names for everything these days. "Xfinity" et al.

...At least "Light Peak" gave me a vague idea of how the tech works by the name alone, whereas Thunderbolt just sounds completely unrelated to the technology.

It's worth bearing in mind that the version of Light Peak that we're likely to see tomorrow, is probably going to be copper-based rather than optical, so Light Peak would probably be just as unrelated as Thunderbolt

Thunderbolt is apparently a copper interconnect, as opposed to Fibre, which the name Light Peak seems to imply. For that reason, I feel they made the right decision not making reference to light and the ties between thunderbolts and lightning does make some sense in this case.

Monitors come with mini displayport? I've not seen any. I've not seen many that come with full-sized displayport and even the Apple ones don't use mini displayport, meaning that, if you buy one of the current generation Apple laptops, it is not possible to plug it into any display without an adaptor. And, of course, none of these adaptors are standard anymore, they're all $20 extra...

I've not seen many that come with full-sized displayport and even the Apple ones don't use mini displayport... And, of course, none of these adaptors are standard anymore, they're all $20 extra...

The Apple Cinema Displays *do* use Mini DisplayPort, and it's been officially brought into the standard now, so isn't just an Apple only port. There's also quite a few laptops out there using it, from Dell, Toshiba HP... The Wikipedia page for Mini DisplayPort [wikipedia.org] has a list of a few.

Monitors come with mini displayport? I've not seen many that come with full-sized displayport and even the Apple ones don't use mini displayport,

Displayport is showing up on lots of monitors (mainly higher end ones) including models from Dell and HP. This dealer [jigsaw24.com] lists 21 models. I have a HP with DisplayPort, and a (passive) MiniDP-to-full DP cable cost me £4.

if i recall... they were also accused of the very same thing with usb on the original iMac in 1998. that really turned out dud decision...

I have a box full of various adapters that Apple forces me to buy every time they change display interconnect to the 'next best thing'. Between the computers changing ports and the display manufacturers trying to keep up, the permutations can become large. Those adapters are $25 each from Apple.

On the other hand, I can still plug in the same USB devices I did from 1998.

Because fiber cables cost more than copper ones? I doubt USB 3.0 is dead, considering Light Peak is protocol-agnostic, it's just a way to send lots of data over a pipe. It doesn't define what that data is like USB or FireWire is.
Nice thing is you should be able to get a port replicator that will have whatever port you want, possibly including USB 3.0.

Let me guess... only 2 USB ports, right beside each other again? I hate this design

Until you try to plug in one of those 2.5" external usb-only drives that comes with the "Y" dual-usb cable for more power, and find the cord is way too short to plug into the left and right USB ports at the same time. (an issue I have ran into repeatedly with my 15" mbp)

Whats wrong with two at the corner, one on each edge? This design would seem to be the most accommodating. Better still, both back corners could be this way, so that there are 2 USB's on the back (opposite sides) as well as 1 USB for each of the left and right sides.

If I was designing a laptop, thats what I would do. Maybe nobody but me sees the value in 4 USB ports in an age where just about every peripheral can be gotten with a USB interface (hard drives, cd/dvd, mouse, sound cards, headsets, compact fl

It is not an attempt to create one port to rule them all; it is an attempt to keep Apple computers separate from every other PC out there. You know, so that people will continue to think that a Mac is something different than a PC.

This is a venture with Intel—and they're not the only two companies involved. Light Peak isn't going to be Apple specific for very long and it's as "proprietary" as USB.

This is all about "1 port to rule them all" and, for the life of me, I cannot figure out why anyone would have a problem with that. I'd like to have 6 ports on my laptop that could be hooked up to ANYTHING without compromise. Suddenly I can hook up a couple more monitors to my laptop or use a high speed external drive or whatever. Or e

Wouldn't it just be cheaper for you to spend a few hours in a gym in order to build up enough muscular stamina so that you can lift a slightly heavier, but cheaper and more functional laptop with those "important extras" like an optical drive & an Ethernet port?

The only reason I can ever come up with where I'd pay a premium price for a Macbook Air is if I was in the terminal phases of some wasting disease and simply couldn't lift anything heavier.

*rolls eyes* Just because YOU think an optical drive is an "important extra" doesn't mean it is to everyone. I was hoping Apple would do away with those across the pro line and replace it with something that's ACTUALLY an important extra like additional mass storage or, I don't know, more battery. I don't even care.

For the once a month (if that) that I use my optical drive I can just use an external and use that space for something that matters on a day to day basis (like... more battery).

Okay, so in other words, Light Peak is designed for people too stupid to be able to work out what cable plugs into what socket on the computer - fair enough, it takes all types to make a (computer using) world.

I may only be a techie engineering type but even I know the first rule of marketing is "If you give it a smart sounding name, some suckers will stump up the money for it as an upgrade, even if it's no better than what they upgraded from."

And when, on iPad 2 launch day, Apple also announces that iOS has been GPLed and that you can buy applications for it from sources other than the Apple Store that haven't gone through their pre-approval process first, then he and I will both be righteous enough to accept you're right.

I've had my fair share of iOS software crash, but, I don't think I've ever had a single piece of malware, rootkit, or nastygram come from the App Store. On mobile, I don't care, I don't want to tinker. I want the damn thing to work.

Yep, some GPL software sucks, just like some commercial software - thanks for pointing out that one to me because in 15 years of using Open Source and Linux, I hadn't worked that one out for myself.

Incidentally, I've never had a single piece of malware using Open Source either - just because I can get my software pretty much anywhere that I want to does not mean that I haven't grown at least a few braincells to work out that there are some places I can trust to get my software from and others that I cannot.

Yet, that doesn't keep malware from stinking up the Android market place.

I'd rather not have to juggle around and make sure that my software is coming from trust sources or that I have to clean up my phone. I did tech support jobs when I was younger and the pay wasn't that great. What makes you think doing it for free on my own time is a better alternative?

It doesn't stink up my Android market place because I'm clever enough not to download endless advert shitware that, for example, makes my mobile phone look like a glass of beer when I hold it to my lips and tip it.

I don't get why you have such a big problem with this as a concept - if you have a driving license then you invested money and time in learning how to use a car and a bit about how it works. Why, just because it's a computer, are there different rules?